


Life in Gravity Falls

by MalkyTop



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-06 21:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4236519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalkyTop/pseuds/MalkyTop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles, ranging from short to middle-length, about the general day-to-day in Gravity Falls. Will probably mostly focus on the Pines twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleepovers

Dipper stared at the ceiling, ultimately deciding that, no offense meant, girly sleepovers were one of his Top Five Most Hated Things, only slightly below Robbie. It wasn't that he didn't like Mabel's friends, it was just that, well, they were kind of disruptive.

The first time, Mabel wanted to have the girls take over their bedroom, but he had convinced them that the living room had more space for them to do their girl things while the attic had not only very little space but also more infestations than was thought possible so it probably was not the best idea to sleep on the floor. So they went downstairs and he slept upstairs and everything was fine until Grunkle Stan caught them playing around in his shop.

So sleepovers were decidedly Not Allowed in the living room.

That meant the second time, Dipper was forced to sleep on the living room chair. He could vaguely hear girlish giggling come from the ceiling, but that wasn't bothering him too much.

What was bothering him was the dust rattling down onto his face as they audibly jumped on the beds.

Dipper rolled around on the chair until his face was pressed against the armrest, which he realized was a mistake because the chair was saturated with Grunkle Stan's funk and hair (please not from the armpits please not from the armpits) but he kept his position because it was slightly better than getting dust in his eyes. It wasn't like he was going to suffocate on old man stink. Maybe.

The odd thing was, the thing he was most worried about was whether the girls were talking about him upstairs.


	2. Enemies

"Dipper, he's staring at me again."

He knew he shouldn't, but he still looked behind him. The flash of a blindingly cyan suit confirmed what his sister said.

There were some drawbacks, he was starting to realize, of puttering about in the town where a psychotic stumpy boy who had the creepy hots for his sister and once attempted to cut off his tongue happened to live.

Gideon didn't come around to the Shack or anything, but he always seemed to know whenever they were going out and always engineered either a "chance meeting" or just followed them around, ducking out of sight whenever they turned around.

So basically, he was being a creep. It was nothing new.

Mabel started walking backwards.

"Ha! Now he won't stare back!"

"Mabel, if you stare at him back, it might give him  _ideas_."

"Yeah, like the idea that I'm  _totally_  onto him and his creepy schemes and he should  _leave us alone_."

"Ooor," said Dipper, pushing her slightly so she wouldn't walk into a lamppost, "he'll get confident and stare back and then you two'll stare at each other like a really creepy couple sending lover messages through their eyes."

After a moment, Mabel started turning slowly as she walked.

"Mabel."

"I've found a median."

"No, Mabel, you're just going to get dizzy and walk into someone."

"Says you."

A few minutes later, Mabel threw up. When Gideon came over as a 'concerned bystander,' Dipper instinctively punched him in the stomach because when a kid who telekinetically threatened you with lamb shears starts walking up to you, you  _don't calmly chat with him_.

Mabel stood up straight. She tottered. She leaned against a building. "I totally didn't walk into someone though," she said, her voice faintly proud.

It was hard to feel impressed, though, with the smell of regurgitated stomach acid filling the air.


	3. Vampires

Sometimes Mabel wandered through the woods alone. They were just so perfect for exploring, and the knowledge that there were really strange creatures living in it who may or may not want her as her wife didn't make them scary, it just made them more  _exciting_. And with everybody else busy with the Shack and Dipper busy with reading or whatever, Mabel wandered on her own, free as a manatee.

Sometimes she saw nothing, only heard crunching twigs and breathing things and felt trees catching her hair, or at least she only thought they were trees because whenever she turned around, there was nothing but sheer forest surrounding her. Sometimes she saw  _things_ from the corner of her eyes, quick little things that disappeared so that she didn't even have time to question whether she saw what she had just seen.

Once, she just chased a plastic bag that flew in the wind because it made her think of ghosts. It amused her for about an hour.

Today, she found a cave. What really caught her eye was the 'Welcome' mat in front of the entrance.

"Hellloooooooo," she trilled, wiping her feet on the mat to be polite. Her voice echoed and bounced, coming back to her like a proud dog with a stick. Eventually, a sleepy reply wound its way to her.

"Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat."

She took it as an invitation to go inside.

The cave was cold and dank and wet, but this was the exact reason why she wore sweaters in the summer. It was getting dark, though, the further she walked in, and it was taking a while for her eyes to adjust, which was why she walked right into a table.

"Heeeey," a nearby voice moaned. "That's my stuff."

There was a dark figure in front of her, and Mabel's eyes were adjusted enough to see that the figure was tall and gaunt and dressed in super-black clothes and she started to connect the dots in her head.

Lives in a cave? Lives in the dark? Super shadowy?

"Wow!" she said, not noticing the figure covering his ears. "You're totally a vampire! Like Batman that one time!"

"Yes. Please don't shout," said the figure.

"You aren't gonna drink my blood, are you?"

"That's disgusting. You're too young."

With that potential danger out of the way, Mabel was free to remember her vampire fantasies. She had been quick to get bored with the ideas of an epic summer romance, or at least to tone down her boy-chasing in favor of awesome forest adventures, but she still was fervently excited about the idea of a vampire boyfriend. Such a relationship would absolutely  _boil over_  with drama and nighttime adventures and tension and inner turmoil and sometimes outer turmoil and it would definitely be something that the other girls in school wouldn't have done over the summer.

So it was time to turn on the unpatented Mable charm.

"Hi, I'm Mabel! D'ya have a light in here? I wanna see your face! And also your name, if you have a nametag, but I don't think you do, so I guess I have to hear it."

The tall figure had folded itself into a chair-shaped thing and yawned. "Kid, you broke into my house. Is there any way I can get you to…leave…? Or something?"

Uh-oh, this totally wasn't working. Her charm was already turned up to eleven, though. If she turned it even higher, there could be dangerously charming consequences.

She turned it up anyways.

"I don't know a lotta games we could play in the dark, but we could totally play a game or something, like flashlight tag! Or flashlight sword-fighting! But it's like lightsabers, not swords, I guess. I don't have flashlights though."

The figure massaged his forehead. "Please. I was sleeping. I'm  _tired_."

Well, that made sense, from what she knew about vampires. "Okay, well, what if I come at night? We could hang out then, and I'll  _definitely_  bring flashlights."

Long fingernails tapped on the table. The cave ceiling dripped all over her sweater. She was going to be itchy later. "I'll probably be asleep tonight."

Mabel ceased rocking on her feet. "You sleep both day  _and_  night?"

"Yeah," said the figure, scratching at his hair. "After a thousand years of this schtick, there's not many things that interest me anymore besides not being bothered by anybody and getting my sleep."

"But…what do you do in your free time, then?"

"Eat. Sleep. Listen to the forest. Take a bath every hundred year or so."

Mabel suddenly decided to leave the cave.

"Vampires suck," she complained later to Dipper at the Shack.

"That's very common knowledge," he replied, grinning into his book.

Mabel punched him in the shoulder.


	4. Lost

At the beginning of the chase, Robbie had exhibited surprising speed and a large vocabulary when it came to curses and creative ways he would utterly  _destroy_  the two bike-thieves through means of humiliation, fear, and a slow, disgustingly gruesome death. But as the chase wore on, he slowed down and his rants had degraded to out-of-breath gibberish. Unfortunately, the bike was also slowing down.

"Dude, go faster, he's catching up."

"I'd – I'd like t-to see  _you_  try…keep-keeping up this speed..."

"How can you even be out of breath? We're made out of  _paper_. Do we even have  _lungs_?"

"L-look, can't  _you_  pedal for a little while…?"

"Um. How? If we stop to switch places, Rob's  _definitely_  going to catch us."

Number Three pondered this for a moment before grudgingly conceding that Number Four had a point.

"M-maybe this is a long…long enough distraction…?" the pedaling clone said.

Number Four steadied himself as the two careened around on the dirt road. He tried keeping an eye on Robbie's curse-heavy progress while at the same time making sure that the stupid idiot didn't see his face. The butt-ugly teen jerkface, who had, against odds, ended up friends-possibly-boyfriends with an awesome girl like Wendy, was somehow maintaining a distance of too-close-for-comfort. "No way, we're supposed to keep him away for  _as long as possible_. That means  _not_  giving up when we get tired."

" _But,_ " said Number Three, who could have sworn that he was somehow burning, "the plan says we're also  _not_  going to let Robbie catch us. If he sees two Dippers, he's going to figure out something's up, even if he is a dumb ratface."

Robbie shouted something along the lines of "gonna pound yuhhrrughhrrablha."

Number Four felt the stupid, uncool dirtbike wobble under them. "Okay, point taken. Ummm, I have  _two_  ideas. One is we find a slope and go down that to gain a lot of speed."

"Dude,  _c'mon_. Th-this is a level road!" It didn't exactly feel like it, with the bike bouncing and rattling as it hit tiny potholes and rocks, but it was definitely level. And despite having technically lived for maybe a few minutes at best, Number Four knew as much as the Dipper back at the Shack did; the road they were on did not lead to any sort of downward slope at all.

"Weeell," said Number Four, twiddling his thumbs while also keeping his arms wrapped around Three's, "the other idea is losing him in the woods."

Three took the suggestion about as well as Four thought he would. "Are you  _serious_? The woods're all  _sorts_  of dangerous,  _not_  to mention that I'm  _already_  having trouble balancing the  _both_  of us on this bike – "

With his concentration stuck on arguing with his fellow clone, Number Three accidentally careened the bike straight off the road and down an especially bumpy hill before they crashed straight into a tree. It was rather fortunate that the two had helmets on, though neither of them knew if they had skulls to crack.

Number Four heard the sound of shoes sliding down the forest floor first and forced Three back to his feet before beating a very hasty retreat. He didn't even get a chance to see how beat up the bike looked, though he dearly hoped that it was  _really_  beat up. Three seemed to be doing something that was less of a run and more of a lean, and his breath was firmly on the heavy side, but Four could still hear the telltale sounds of a gangly teen fumbling about in the underbrush some ways behind them and mercilessly pulled on his double's arm harder, forwards, onwards, on and on and on.

He abruptly turned right, then turned back left, just to try to throw the guy off trail, and pressed ever onwards into the thick of the forest as Three continued to gasp out pleas for rest. His helmet was starting to dip over his eyes, and coupled with the absolute darkness of the forest, Four was truly and honestly Freaked Out, possibly even FREAKED OUT with the all caps and everything. He continued to drag Three a distance that might have been halfway across the forest before he finally stopped, realizing that Robbie must have long ago given up on even finding them.

Four let go of Three, who immediately collapsed and took in long gulps of air. The forest settled into an oppressive hush around them. Not even the sound of wind through the leaves above punctuated the air.

"Where, where are we?" panted Number Three, and Four could only shrug. In his panicked run, he had neglected to keep track of the exact direction they had come from. Neither of them had a map of the woods.

Neither of them said the L-word though. Neither of them wanted to say it, because saying it might make it true, even though it already was.

"Should…we go back…?" Four asked. The plan only covered them stealing the bike. It didn't say anything about  _afterwards_. The two of them had done what was required and were essentially useless and expendable now. They weren't even really  _real_ , technically, so it didn't matter what happened to them from this point on. But as Three sat up, brushing pine needles off his back, he realized that this sort of mentality really  _sucked_. Even if he was a mere duplicate of someone real, he was sentient, right? He had autonomy. And having life was really awesome while being depressingly self-reflective was not.

He also realized that he was ridiculously glad that he wasn't partnered with Paper Jam Dipper.

"Well, if I know Dipper Classic, and I'm pretty sure I do, he's gonna need all the hands he can get."

"Okay," said Four, slipping his helmet off. "I mean…if you know the way to go and all."

Number Three didn't know the way. But he wasn't about to let naïve, young Number Four know that.

He picked a direction and hoped.

 


	5. Waddles

"I don't recall allowing you a pet."

"But Grunkle  _Staaaaan_!"

"No! Pets are a money sink! A money  _black hole_ , even, and I don't want any of  _my_  cash going down the drain!" For emphasis, Stan poked a finger into the pig's stomach. "Get that pig outta here, else I'll slap it on the grill for breakfast."

Mabel pulled Waddles away, almost on the verge of tears. "Don't say that in front of  _Waddles!_  He'll hear!"

The Shack owner could only scoff. Dipper watched it all.

To be honest, his chest still hurt from the recent events. From giving all his effort to gain the best possible universe and then having to wipe it all away. From watching Robbie ask  _that_  question and Wendy  _accepting,_  over and over and knowing that he endured watching it _over and over_ only because he knew he was going to change it and then realizing that he would have to watch it for the last time and then simply  _let it happen_. From knowing that Wendy  _liked_  Robbie enough to just…go out with him. Just like that.

But there were some things he could live with. He could live with staying off of Wendy's radar. (That was where he had  _always_  stayed, anyways.) He could live with watching Robbie do all the boyfriend things that he wanted to do but couldn't, even though it would open his raw, emotional wounds every time. But he could never live with the guilt of destroying his sister's happiness.

He stepped in.

"C'mon, Grunkle Stan. We can feed him leftovers and table scraps, so food's not a problem. If he messes up the place, we'll clean it up. We'll take him out for walks, uh, if that's what pigs…need…or whatever. And if you want to, like, keep him outside, we'll even build a small pigpen.  _And_  we'll pay for the materials! So it's not like you'll have to do a thing."

Grunkle Stan stood tall with his arms akimbo. He gave half a glare, as he had forgotten to take off his eyepatch. "Yeah? Do you even  _know_  how to build a pigpen?"

"Soos can help us!" Mabel said, still cradling the pig in her arms. All fifteen pounds. Dipper had to admit that his arms would have already grown tired at that point. "Right, Soos?"

"Yes to whatever you just said." Soos probably didn't even  _know_ that they had a pet pig now, but he would find out soon enough. The twins turned back to their great-uncle with the most charming, forceful smiles that Stan had taught them.

Stan just ran a hand down his face. "Alright,  _alright_. Gang up on  _me_ , why don'cha. But I swear, if you kids ever get  _bored_  with Wiggles – "

"Waddles," corrected Mabel, though it fell on half-deaf ears.

" – the next time you'll see him is on a  _plate_."

Mabel continued to cover Waddles' sensitive and innocent ears. "So we can keep him?" Hope seemed to balloon in her chest and flow out of her eyes.

Stan sighed. "Yeah."

Waddles was suddenly thrust between a hug sandwich consisting of Mabel and Stan, much to the old man's discontent. " _ThankyouthankyouthankyouWadd lessaysthankyoutooohmygosh_ "

"Mabel, maybe we should go make that pigpen…?" Dipper reminded, and Mabel was off in a flash, somehow able to keep up top speeds even with a pig hanging from her arms. Dipper didn't even bother trying to catch up and only strolled along in the dust clouds she left behind.

If you asked him, Wendy was far superior to a pig. Seriously, no contest, not even  _close_. He wouldn't even  _dare_  compare Wendy to a pig because not only was there no comparison, it was also sort of insulting and he was sure if he had mentioned this to Wendy (along with all the weird time travel stuff he had went through as background information), she would have slapped him and then never go out with him.

But Dipper had to admit that Waddles was a very,  _very_  adorable pig.

 


	6. Slender

There were certainly many weird things inside the book, there were many strange ramblings and incoherent babble strewn among the somewhat informative entries, but this was just  _inexplicable_. Dipper was willing to just discredit this page as something from the mind of an insane man, but that would mean potentially doubting everything else in the book and he certainly didn't want to go  _that_  far. The information provided had always been rather accurate, so that meant that this page was most likely accurate too.

But it was just about a  _guy_. Some dude who was tall. There was nothing odd about that, and there were no curt notes explaining what was odd about a tall man. There were only a lot of panicked, illegible scrawls.

The drawing of the man was rather crude as well, with no defining features. Not even a face. No pictures either.

Dipper chewed on his pencil. Whatever this was seemed to have terrified the previous owner of the book, but there was nothing he could see that indicated any real danger. Floating eyeballs were at least freaky, and ghosts could be outright deadly, but…this was a tall man. It felt silly comparing him to all the weird things that Dipper had encountered himself.

So this was why Dipper ended up forgetting all about the page as soon as he was called over for dinner. It took, after all, a ridiculous amount of concentration to be able to eat a patented Grunkle Stan Dinner.

He didn't think about the strange page after dinner. He didn't think about it while he brushed his teeth and fought with Mabel over control of the sink. He didn't even think about it as he crawled into bed.

But he did think about it, as he rolled around under his sheets, when the house was absolutely silent and the only light was that of the moon's and he looked over in the half-darkness and saw that the attic's trapdoor was open.

Not even all the way open, just pushed up a crack, as if someone was peeking at him.

Instinctively, Dipper rolled back on his other side and threw the quilt over his head, as though it had some protective aura.  _What is it what is it what is it is it that thing in the book the tall man aaaaaahhh_.

Dipper wished he had thought to at least  _attempt_  to decipher the meaningless scribbles. At least the part that would have told him a weakness or something, if the tall man even had one. But he hadn't.

It was fortunate that he always had the book nearby. It was just on the bedside table. If he reached behind him, maybe he could grab it. Then grab the flashlight, which was in the table's drawer. And hopefully the thing staring from the attic door wouldn't kill him.

Getting the book wasn't too much trouble, just took a little time patting around in the air and on the table until he latched onto it, and then it was under his quilt in a millisecond. The flashlight was trickier, though, and as Dipper groped for the drawer's handle, he slowly realized that he may have to actually  _look_.

He didn't want to. He  _absolutely_ didn't want to. There was  _nothing_  that he wanted to do less than what he would have to do now. But he couldn't read in the dark.

He looked.

There was a tall, slender figure in a suit. Right next to his bed.  _Standing_  there.  _With no face_.

Dipper didn't even realize he was screaming until the lights flipped on and he blinked in the sudden brightness and the thing beside his bed was gone.

Mabel looked over from her side of the attic. "Dipper," she groaned, "What are you even doing."

Dipper looked over to the trapdoor. It was closed. And so was the window.

"I, uh," he said, glancing down at the book in his hands. "N-nothing. Go back to sleep."

 


	7. The Switch

Dipper didn't really understand how Mabel could so blithely roam the forest. Generally, she went about life with an undying optimistic innocence that, he felt, bordered on ignorance, but the  _forest_ …

It wasn't that he was  _afraid_ , but…

Okay, he was.

In the forest lay unimaginable creatures, things that rustled and stared, things that he couldn't understand, things that didn't let on to their motives until it was too late and suddenly they were chewing on your arm or marrying you. And Mabel knew all of this and she was _fine_. Dipper didn't understand this.

But, well, the roof could use some more pinecones. And Dipper could use this as a chance to improve his throwing arm. He still wasn't able to hit the totem's target, but he was getting better. One time he got a pinecone wedged in one of the grotesque mouths. It was a week before Grunkle Stan noticed.

And with Mabel here, he felt a little less scared.

"Hey, watch me hit that knothole." He wound up his arm, shut his left eye, and gave a hard toss. Mabel obediently watched as the pinecone sailed magnificently and landed right on where the knothole wasn't. Specifically, it landed at the roots.

"You're  _bad_  at this," Mabel said, swinging her bucket of pinecones around, either not noticing or not caring about the ones that sloshed out. Dipper gave her a light shove and threw a second one. This time, it bounced off the impromptu target.

"A- _hah_ ," Dipper crowed, pointing at his sister triumphantly before spiking his bucket. Then he realized what he did.

Mabel laughed. Hard. Dipper could only gaze down at his scattered pinecones and breathe out an "Aw  _man_ ," before resentfully picking up his spiked bucket. As he reached for a pinecone, Mabel stopped him.

"Hold up, I got an idea! Prop that up in that tree up there!" Her hand poked out of her baggy sweater and pointed to a crook in a nearby tree. Dipper stood back and judged the height, as well as the climbability. It was thick, and it didn't have many low branches, but there was one that seemed low enough to reach if Mabel boosted him up. But it was a pine tree (all trees were pine trees in Gravity Falls apparently), and Dipper didn't particularly like the idea of pine needles poking at him as he did whatever it was Mabel wanted him to do. On the other hand, Mabel could punch really hard.

His sister helped him up easily. The hard part was actually climbing. The tree's branches were, Dipper now noticed, distressingly thin and shook with every move he made, making the going slow. Mabel yelled up encouraging comments such as "You're such a  _slowpoke_."

Eventually, he managed to wrap an arm partway around the trunk and lean precariously forward on an already precarious perch and stuffed the bucket in the crook. His muscles trembled with the effort and it seemed that he was unable to push himself upright again, so he continued to stay diagonal, leaning on two branches, about a gazillion feet up.

Mabel wound up her throwing arm. "Yeah! That's great! Okay, now I'm gonna show you how to  _really_  throw…"

Oh, was  _that_  it? If she really wanted to show off,  _she_  could've climbed up here. As it was, Dipper wasn't really sure if he could even get down without falling. He shook with the effort of resisting gravity.

Mabel rubbed her knuckles. She blew on her chosen pinecone. And with one step, she gave an almighty  _throw_ …

…five feet to the left of the target.

Dipper would have laughed and jeered, but it was then, after the pinecone sailed over the underbrush and out of sight, that there was the sound of a dull impact. And then a rattling roar.

"What was  _that_?" Mabel asked as Dipper fell from the tree sans bucket. Grunkle Stan was going to get on their case for that one. But the sound seemed more important at the moment.

Dipper found himself thankfully uninjured, though he scraped a knee and the palms of his hands, but that was barely much at all and, like Mabel, he was more concerned with what in the world she hit. His arm dove under his vest for the book automatically as he backed away. "I'm…not sure if I want to find out. Maybe we should get out of here before it…Mabel?"

She was already going ahead.

Dipper found her hiding in the bushes that surrounded a clearing. Standing inside it was the thing she had hit.

It looked like a large deer, but the head was elongated, almost grotesquely so, and the eyes pitch-tar black and bulbous and large. Its blood-red coat was ornately decorated, like tattoos, elegant white swirls and speckles, designs that outlined the tall, graceful body.

It also had a mouth that opened four-ways, like some sort of alien insect.

"What  _is_  that?" Mabel gaped in her hiding place. Dipper was already flipping as fast as he could through the book. The deer-thing looked really agitated and it was probably best not to stick around.

"Um, uh…" The page that Dipper finally flipped to was not encouraging in the slightest and, seeing the words carved into the page, the intense fear behind them, he felt his throat close.

"We gotta get out of here," he hissed, grabbing his sister's hand, and he stood up to start running.

But it was apparently too sudden.

The beast snapped its head towards them, eyes glinting, staring straight into his  _soul_. And then it opened its mouth. And made no sound.

It was a roar, of a sort. It was the absence of a roar. It was the absence of all  _sound_ , apparently sucking it into the gaping maw, or maybe he had gone deaf, and maybe it was his imagination but it felt as though he was being  _pulled into it_  and at the same time not moving at all because his feet were still on the ground except he couldn't  _feel_  them anymore, he couldn't feel  _anything_ , the whole world was darkening, he was losing all sense of reality…

…And then there was a noise like a forceful blast and the vague feeling of being thrown through space and then Dipper could see again and he was on the ground, staring at the sky.

Oh  _god_  was he glad he was staring at the sky. Because if the book was right (and it always was), then he just missed a near-death…

The book wasn't in his hands.

Dipper suddenly realized that he was wearing a sweater. And when he looked to his side, he saw himself.

* * *

First he freaked out aloud, but listening to Mabel's voice say his own words just served to freak him out even more. So instead he freaked out silently as they explored the clearing for any signs of the large beast and continued his silent freaking-out as they started back towards the Shack, having found absolutely nothing. But somewhere in the middle, he became merely annoyed.

"Mabel," he (was he even a he anymore? Was he a she now?) lisped. "How do you  _live_  with these things?" For the thousandth time, he rubbed his tongue over the new metal braces around his teeth. Mabel's teeth. His temporary teeth. The things felt tight and they jutted into the inside of his lips, giving him the impression that they were actually cutting his mouth open.

"Aah, you get used to it," said Mabel, talking in his voice half an octave too high. It grated on his ears.

"I can barely talk with these," he complained. "I don't even know how I'm going to  _eat_  with these."

Mabel rolled her eyes that weren't really hers. "Sooorr- _yyyyy_ , not  _everybody_  can have perfect teeth like you…" As she trailed off, her face lit up and she dropped their salvaged bucket of pinecones. "Ohmigosh, your teeth are  _my_  teeth now! I have perfect teeth!"

"Hey, hey," Dipper said, picking up the bucket again, "not for long you aren't, 'cause we gotta figure out how to fix this – "

"I CAN EAT WHATEVER I WANT!" Mabel shouted, already ten feet ahead and gaining distance. She burst out of the woods in her eager frenzy and almost collided with the Shack's door on her way in.

"W-wait! That's  _my_  body!" Dipper yelled out, but she couldn't hear, and if she could, she probably wouldn't care. Dipper groaned. She was going to gorge herself on taffy and hard candies and gum and  _he_  was going to be the one with the stomach-ache…if they managed to switch back – and they certainly would if  _he_  had anything to do about it. In the meantime, they would have to figure out how to not completely embarrass each other (though probably it would mostly be  _Mabel_  embarrassing  _him_ ).

Mabel had given him the book since she wasn't interested in carrying it around all the time, and as he pushed the door of the Shack open and stealthily made his way up to the roof to drop off the bucket, he took it out from under his arm and opened back to the page of that beast.

The Soul Eater.

There was no description of any soul-switching. It was a complete mystery why that had even happened. But a switch was certainly better than the alternative.

He gave a heavy sigh as it slowly dawned on him that he was going to have to act like Mabel as long as he was like this. _  
_

That sounded  _exhausting._


	8. The Switch Part 2

When Dipper came down again, he found Mabel in the kitchen (which was also the dining room), mouth full of what was most likely candy. Soos was nearby, having apparently gotten said candy for Mabel-as-Dipper to consume.

"Look," Mabel said, her voice muffled by sticky, sugary goodness, "ah've god  _so_  mush gum immy mouf!"

"By my count, that's sixty-four pieces of gum. Hey Dipper, you think you could go for, like, the world record or something? Is there even a world record for that?"

Dipper flinched, almost instinctively reacting to his name. Mabel continued chewing gum, apparently not realizing that Soos was actually talking to her. Soos, overall, didn't notice anything, which was quite usual. "Hang on, I'm gonna go check," he said, ducking out of the room in a hurry.

As soon as Soos rounded the corner and plodded merrily along his quest, Dipper tugged on Mabel's – his own – arm. "Upstairs.  _Now_."

"Buh wah abouh dha wurl rekor?" Mabel said, accidentally spitting on his face.

Dipper wiped his face clean. " _Forget_  that, we need to  _talk_. We need to make a plan – "

At this, Mabel attempted to make a 'psshhhh' sound but only succeeded in choking on her own saliva. For a few tense seconds, Dipper was afraid that he was going to watch himself die (also be stuck as he was forever) but Mabel soon recovered. "You  _awwahs_  needda makh ah plan."

"Maybe so, but  _this_  situation  _really_ needs a plan," Dipper said, starting to tug at Mabel's arm. She tried to pull back but it was largely ineffectual.

" _Ugh_ ," she grunted. "Yur ahms'r  _rwearry_  noodhy an'  _weag_."

Dipper pretended not to hear that. "We need to figure out what exactly happened, how we get it fixed without getting killed – "

Mabel still refused to get out of the chair, and despite all her sputtering and spitting about noodly arms, was giving a good struggle. With her free hand, she karate-chopped him on the head, to which Dipper responded by flailing, falling over and accidentally pulling Mabel with him, who in turn accidentally pulled the table down with her. The salt-and-pepper shakers that were on top fell to the floor and promptly exploded, which allowed a billowing cloud of eye-searing pepper to envelop them.

In the tangled mess of flailing limbs, Mabel managed to gain an upright position. Miraculously, she had managed to keep her gum seated firmly on top of her tongue. Less miraculously, the pepper was irritating her nose.

She sneezed.

She sneezed with such force that her wad of gum went flying out of her mouth. It was at this moment that Soos came back with a rather thick book. He had just enough time to say "I fou – " before the giant wad splattered onto the book's cover with the force of a very tiny cannonball and enveloped his hands, melding them permanently (maybe) to the book forever (possibly).

Dipper watched all of this and it seemed to him that the action went by slowly, and in his mind he heard that unearthly sound of  _expulsion_.

It  _sneezed_.

And the next second, he had taken advantage of this opportunity, dragged Mabel up to her feet and skedaddled all the way up to the attic. He immediately shoved the bedside table onto the door while debating whether to take this chance to change into shorts because _man_  wearing a skirt was  _weird_. But oddly comfortable.

He wasn't sure what that said about him.

"Aw,  _c'mon_ ," Mabel complained, "I was about to find out if I beat the  _world record_! I could've, like, beaten the  _world_ in gum chewing!"

It sneezed. The Soul Eater had sneezed. It was a chance event that had saved their souls from being a midday meal, and it was unlikely to simply happen again. Dipper scrolled his mind through several plans, one of which included a giant pepper shaker, but he knew he just had to accept that this thing that had happened…well, maybe this couldn't result in a quick-fix like he had hoped.

Dipper tried to explain all of this to Mabel, tried to explain how utterly  _important_  it was that they didn't let anybody find out about this, tried to explain that they needed to work on the ultimate deception.

"Aw, c'mon, we're twins! If you cut your hair and I tape it onto my head, then no one'll know the difference!"

"There are  _so_  many things wrong with that idea," said Dipper, who was growing a little frustrated with how… _unworried_  Mabel seemed.

"Psssh, you're just in a bad mood 'cause you got  _braces_."

It was true that the braces had not ceased being grating. More annoying than the braces, though, was the stuffiness of the sweater. But that wasn't the point.

"Look, just…for the time being, you're gonna have to pretend to be me."

Mabel turned over on her back on her bed and stared up at him. "Awww, but being you is  _booorring_."

"What? I'm not boring!"

"Yeah you are. You're always serious and not as talkative and stuff and then when you're around Wendy you laugh really loudly."

"No I'm…" Dipper thought for a moment. "…I'm not  _always_  serious…"

"Yuh- _huh_. And you keep telling me what to do a lot," she continued, her bluntness apparently coming out as more blood rushed to her head. "So does this mean I get to boss you around now?"

"What? I don't – you –  _nobody's_  bossing anybody around! Okay, look! The way you're acting right now,  _everybody'll_  know that something's up! So you have to –"

Mabel rolled off her bed and hopped to her feet, pointing at him. "There it is! 'Have to!' You're doing it again!"

"That's just  _common sense!_  Which I guess you don't have at all!"

" _Oh look, I'm Dipper_ ," Mabel grunted.

"C-c'mon I don't sound like that. You're making my voice too deep."

" _I'm right all the time and I think my sister is dumb._ "

"I don't – "

" _I overthink things too much but that just shows how smart I am! Anxiety is a sign of a genius! If only I knew that people don't care about the things I worry about!_ "

Underneath the baggy sweater sleeves, Dipper clenched his fists. The braces seemed to sting harder. Without thinking, he started speaking in a falsetto that, in his normal body, he would have  _never_  been able to reach.

" _Hi, I'm Mabel! I'm happy all the time 'cause ignorance is bliss! Why think about things?! Thinking is dumb and for sissies!_ "

He already knew he was regretting this. But he couldn't stop.

" _There's no such thing as danger! Watch as I blindly run into situations I can't get out of! Oh, wait, maybe this is what got us into this mess in the first place! Oh well, silly me!_ "

The worst part was…

Mabel didn't even looked shocked or anything.

As though she thought…as though she  _expected_ …

The bedside table rattled as somebody tried to open the attic door. Then the somebody started pounding on it.

"Hey! Kids!" said the gravelly voice of their great-uncle. "Why're you imitating yourselves? You're not even mocking each other, that doesn't even make  _sense_."

The two stood opposite each other silently, neither wanting to answer. Eventually, Grunkle Stan just coughed. "Look, Soos has all this gunk on his hands and the kitchen's a mess, so I  _expect_  you two to clean it up. Even if you didn't do it. Which you did. I'm going to get some ice for that gum, but  _by the time I'm done…_ "

The unfinished threat hung in the air as he climbed back down the ladder.

Dipper and Mabel were left alone again. Never before had they felt so unknown to the other.

 


	9. Found

"You should have just left me behind," said Four, although he was unable to keep the gratitude out of his voice.

"Shut up. I'm almost done."

Things had not been going well for them. They had been forced to sleep on the ground for several nights, as apparently they did need sleep, and learned the hard way that there were things in the woods that would gladly take advantage of slumbering paper clones if given the opportunity. There wasn't much in the way of food, and in any case many edible things were also somewhat liquidy, so they nibbled on pinecones to alleviate their hunger pangs (which Three couldn't really believe were real). And then, while looking for a way to cross a river, Four slipped. If it hadn't been for the rusted axe that they had found stuck in a tree a while back, Three wouldn't have been able to make a hasty amputation, separating Four from his melting leg.

The problem was that Four could no longer walk, which meant that Three had to make some sort of peg leg. He had been doing this for the past two days. Carving things with a rusty axe was very,  _very_  hard. And he still had no idea how he was going to attach it to Four's leg.

Four didn't bother to point out that he had been 'almost done' for a day already and just laid silent, staring up at the obscured sky. The only sound was the careful scrapes of axe on wood.

"Do you think," Four started, "that, uh, we have, like, souls and stuff?"

"Mm," said Three, not in the mood for philosophizing.

"I mean, that copier copied  _everything._  Except the pine tree on the hat. We're autonomous, so I guess we have a brain, and we must at least have a skeletal structure and significant mass if we don't just fall over or get blown away in the wind."

"Mm."

"But we're not actual  _people_  or anything. We're just, like, paper. And it's not like we're unique either, we're just…copies. Really convincing copies, but it's like, everything about us is  _fake_  – "

Three threw the finished peg-leg at Four's head. "Done. Now stop talking like that or I'll be tempted to cut off your other leg."

Four laughed nervously as he sat up, rubbing his nose. "Um. Right. So how do I put this on?"

"Well," said Three, taking off his vest, "if I twist this up a little, it might make a strong enough strap."

* * *

It took another day of practice for Four to get used to his new prosthetic before they headed off, moving a little away from the river before making a perpendicular turn.

This was, Three couldn't help but think, utterly ridiculous. The forest wasn't  _that_  huge. They couldn't be so far removed from civilization that they couldn't even hear  _sounds_. But the forest had a way of swallowing up sounds, apparently. He could only hear twigs crunching underfoot while Four wobbled behind him.

Every few minutes, they had to stop and re-tie the peg leg. Every time, thoughts arose unbidden, how slow they were going, how much of a burden his look-alike was, how he would be better off alone, thoughts that he knew only arose during silence so he buried them in conversation.

But the forest was oppressive – the sunshine was always mottled, always muted. Their utter loneliness pressed down all around them. Every time they started up a conversation, it would die off soon after. And, more and more, all their conversations were on the depressingly philosophical side, until Three started wondering what the point was, of wandering about in the woods with no idea where to turn, trying to return to a home that was not theirs, to a life they really didn't have. By now, the reason for their existence was long gone, and whether their plan had worked or not didn't matter anymore. Perhaps if Dipper really needed clones for another scheme, then they would have a use, but it was a lot easier to just make new clones than to hide old ones, one of them injured –

"Didja hear that?"

Three stopped. "What? No." But now that he was actually listening, he did. It was quite near, and it sounded like a dull  _thump thump_ , like pounding on tough wood, and there was a subtle cracking sound…

"Look out!" shouted Four, wobbling away so fast that he almost fell over. Three saw it, saw the massive tree descending like a distressed giraffe, and he jumped away as it landed with a thud and a groan.

He was now covered in pine needles. Well, it wasn't as bad as eating pinecones, really.

Four was already struggling to his feet when a boisterous guffaw exploded from the newly-made stump. "Take  _that_ , tree," said the unspeakably manly voice, "I don't even  _need_  an axe to take you down! I got my  _FISTS!_ "

It was Manly Dan. Oh thank  _god_. Of all the people to run into while horribly lost in the woods, a rather jovial guy that was all muscle was probably best.

It was only after he had let Four lean on him and the two of them hobbled much too eagerly towards the looming figure that Three realized that their appearance was going to be really hard to explain, but by that time, the man had already seen them and was approaching with a gait that could only be described as 'manly' because there was no suitable word for how full of testosterone that gait was.

"Ah!" the wall of rippling manliness said while Three was debating whether to quickly retreat or not. "You children shouldn't just wander the woods alone! What if that tree hit you, huh? Then I'd have to hide your bodies! Say…" Dan loomed over them. He loomed over everybody, really. Three hid the axe behind his back and almost chopped off his head with the too-swift movement. Four attempted to slide over so that his peg leg was hidden behind Three, but stumbled in the process. Noticing that Three wasn't pretending to not be Dipper, Four took off his hat, then put it back on, then almost took it off again, then settled for pulling the brim exceedingly low over his face. They both stared up at Dan as he rubbed a hand contemplatively through his beard.

"Hmmmm…I know you…"

"Uh, yeah?" Three said, failing to sound nonchalant.

Dan snapped his fingers, which was startlingly loud. Four fell over and Three dropped the axe, which flopped over and looked as innocent as a rusty axe could. "Yeah! You're those twin kids or whatever! Nipper and Bagel! Wendy talked about you two."

"Really?" Two paper hearts simultaneously fluttered, despite the mangled names.

Manly Dan nodded, mostly to himself. "Yeah, yeah…said you were cute kids."

Their hearts wavered a little. Well, 'cute' was a start, right?

"Hey, is that my old axe?"

The clones looked down at the fallen weapon of mass tree-struction. "Uh, maybe?"

"Ha!" boomed Dan as he scooped the decrepit axe up. "It is! I'd recognize that curvature of the blade anywhere!"

"If you don't mind," said Four, not even bothering to hide his lack of a leg anymore since Dan didn't seem to notice anything, "what was it doing all the way in the middle of the woods, stuck to a tree?"

"Well, when I was young," Dan replied with a misty look in his manly eyes, "I tried to throw it like one of those things you throw, like that thing in the Olympics. Wanted to see if I could cut down multiple trees like that. Then I lost it because I missed."

"…You missed a tree…in the woods."

"Yup," said Dan, never losing his nostalgic expression.

The three stood there for a few minutes as Manly Dan continued adventuring in his manly memories. With a wistful sigh, he eventually came back down to earth. "Well anyways, I better get you kids outta here. Don't want any trees hitting you."

"Yeah," said Four. "That would be great."

* * *

Manly Dan offered to lead them all the way back to the Shack, but Three insisted that he could just lead them to the road and they'd figure it out from there. The two watched the hulking figure lumber back into the forest. Pricking their ears, they would almost swear that they could hear the trees shaking in fear.

"…So now what?" said Four. "Are we just…going to go back?"

Three thought for a moment.

"Well..."

 


End file.
